Mindscape

Children at a glance….

We talk about children and kids. We profess our love, appreciation, responsibility and commitment to them. All good and nice. But how aware are we about children? How concerned? Is it our own kids where our responsibility ends? Do we, adults, understand them? Know their problems? Do we really care?

To many questions? Unfortunately yes. And all relevant. Mindscape tries to take a closer look at Children.

Issues regarding Children

(Courtesy : CRIN)

1. Child abuse – Child abuse includes all forms of physical and emotional mistreatment, sexual abuse, and neglect of a child’s basic needs, which results in actual or potential harm to a child’s physical, mental, and emotional health. Exploitation of children is also a form of abuse and includes trafficking for sexual or economic purposes, and recruitment of children into armed forces. An abused child may experience many forms of mistreatment in any one incident or over time; for example, emotional harm is a pervading factor in all types of abuse. The abuser may be a family member, a stranger, another child, or someone responsible for a child’s well-being, such as a teacher or caretaker.

2. Armed Conflict – Two million children have been killed in armed conflict in the last decade. Three times as many have been seriously injured or permanently disabled. Millions of others have been forced to take part in or witness horrifying acts of violence. Increasingly, children are targets, not incidental casualties, a devastating carnage that reflects a wider trend in recent decades – a rise in the proportion of war victims who are civilians from 5 per cent to over 90 per cent.

In countless cases, the impact of armed conflict on children’s lives remains invisible. The children themselves may be removed from the public, in institutions, on the streets or surviving as victims of prostitution. Those who have lost parents often experience humiliation, rejection and discrimination, suffering in silence as their self-esteem crumbles. Their insecurity and fear cannot be measured.

3. Child Labour - Recent figures from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) show that:

• Globally, 1 in 6 children work
• 218 million children aged 5 – 17 are involved in child labour world wide
• 126 million children work in hazardous conditions
• The highest numbers of child labourers are in the Asia/Pacific region, where there are 122 million working children
• The highest proportion of child labourers is in Sub Saharan Africa, where 26% of children (49 million) are involved in work.

There has often been a tendency to focus on the visible forms of work, such as children who work in hazardous conditions, but this can obscure the many other ways in which children work. Rural working children, for example, are mainly engaged in agricultural activities and collecting water, fuel and fodder. In many countries, poor girls work as domestic servants for richer families. Almost everywhere, children, especially girls, perform unpaid work for their families. That work is done in the home or in family enterprises does not necessarily make it easier or more acceptable.

4. Children in conflict with law – Juvenile justice is a matter of practical concern in all regions and all legal systems. Large numbers of children become caught up in the legal system, as accused or accusers, victims or witnesses and in situations outside conflicts with the criminal law, such as asylum-seeking children, refugee and unaccompanied children, and children incarcerated with their mothers.

5. Children without parental care – The separation of children from their families can result from many causes, including the death of one or both parents, abandonment, displacement due to armed conflict, trafficking, or simply the inability or unwillingness of the family to provide care. The roots of separation can also be found in behavior problems, relationship difficulties, abuse, or neglect.

6. Particular threats -

a) Children affected by HIV and AIDS – The HIV/AIDS pandemic is having a devastating impact on the well-being of children, particularly in those countries with the highest HIV prevalence rates in sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, and parts of Asia. The virus affects children in multiple ways; they may lose one or both parents and other family members, or become infected with the disease. Aside from the physical and psychosocial stress associated with the onset of the disease itself and the experience of loss of loved ones, children affected by HIV/AIDS may additionally be subjected to the burden of caring for others, stigma, discrimination, exploitation, abuse, financial hardships, and are less likely to attend school. The social and economic effects of the disease means that areas with high AIDS-related mortality are less able to provide traditional family and community care, protection and basic services for its children.

b) Children affected by armed conflict, war and displacement – Children are especially vulnerable to the effects of war, and frequently represent at least half of the population in a conflict area. They suffer fear and insecurity, and disruption to every aspect of their lives. Children who have been displaced are at an increased risk of sexual and physical violence, disease and malnutrition, and separation from family members. As displaced persons or refugees they may experience severe poverty, abuse, exploitation, and psychosocial distress.

Children without parental care in conflict areas are highly vulnerable to abduction or other forms of recruitment by armed forces and groups. Such children may be used to fight, provide labour or be sexually exploited. Involvement in conflict may result in malnutrition, abuse, addiction to drugs, injury, psychosocial distress or death. While children associated with armed forces and groups make up a small minority of the total number of children affected by war, they are extremely vulnerable and in need of particular protection and care.

c) Children living and working on the streets – Children living and working on the street are some of the most excluded and unprotected in the world. While some are homeless with their families, or return home at night after working on the street, many others are without parental care or a home and have no viable alternatives. This may be the result of family disintegration, conflict, poverty, HIV/AIDS, abuse or neglect. Life on the street exposes children to a myriad of risks and robs them of the safety and comfort that a family environment can offer.

Children living and working on the streets are highly vulnerable to abuse, exploitation, addictions, and crime, and lack access to everyday essential services such as health and education. Their situation is made more difficult as a result of social perceptions of street children. Street children are frequently targeted by the police, beaten, held and charged without due process. Government policies, institutions, and communities may exclude or marginalise children on the street, and deny their basic human rights.

e) Children with disabilities – A disability includes a physical impairment such as mobility, hearing, visual, and language difficulties, and developmental delays which affect a person’s behaviour, emotional expression, and learning abilities. It includes mild to severe disabilities, from cerebral palsy, paralysis and amputation, to blindness, deafness, autism, and dyslexia. Children may be born with an impairment, or develop one as a result of disease, abuse, or an injury, e.g. many children are the victims of shootings, bombings, and explosions in conflict affected areas.

Children with impairments or special needs are highly vulnerable to discrimination, abandonment, abuse, exploitation, injury and death, since they are more reliant on the cooperation and support of others to meet their basic needs, and may be less able to express their wishes. In some cultures, children with special needs are actively excluded from participating in society since they may be viewed as a source of shame, or unworthy of care and protection.

f) Child trafficking – Child trafficking is a form of child abuse. It is the exploitation of children for economic or sexual purposes, and includes the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring, or receipt of a child for exploitation.

Children may be sold, illegally adopted, forced into early marriage, recruited into the armed forces, pushed into prostitution, or trafficked to work in mines, factories, or homes. In such environments they are exposed to extreme forms of abuse and are denied access to basic services and the meeting of their fundamental human rights. Trafficked children often lack basic legal status and support networks, making their condition virtually “invisible.”

7. Discrimination – Poverty, conflict, chronic social instability and preventable diseases such as HIV/AIDS threaten children’s rights and sabotage their development. The situation is even worse for girls because of the discrimination they face in all sectors of society in every country. Gender discrimination keeps young girls from school and women from active and equal involvement in their communities.

Similar forms of discrimination is at the base of many of the violations of child rights, when specific groups of children face discrimination on account of their sex, colour, race, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic and social origin, property, disability, birth or other status. Disabled children, for example, are often excluded from mainstream education. Children of minority, indigenous or migrant background face in a number of ways. They are disproportionately represented among juveniles who are imprisoned, less likely to access quality and relevant education, more likely to be recruited as child soldiers, trafficked, exposed to hazardous work and sexual exploitation. Creating an environment where girls and boys are respected and cared for equally in early childhood is the first step towards breaking cycles of discrimination and disadvantage.

8. Education – Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names, and most are poorer and unhealthier than those who can. They are the world’s functional illiterates and their total includes more than 130 million children who do not attend school, 73 million of them girls.

Yet the ability to claim and enjoy the rights of an informed and responsible citizen rests squarely on a child’s access to a good basic education. A quality education – that encourages children’s participation and critical thinking and is infused with the values of peace and human dignity – has the power to transform societies in a single generation.

Furthermore, the fulfilment of a child’s right to education offers protection from a multitude of hazards, such as a life consigned to poverty, bonded labour in agriculture or industry, domestic labour, commercial sexual exploitation or recruitment into armed conflict.

9. Health – Every day, 30,500 boys and girls under five die of mainly preventable causes, and even more children and young people succumb to illnesses, neglect, accidents and assaults that did not have to happen. Failure sets in early: what happens during the very earliest years of a child’s life, from birth to age 3, influences how the rest of childhood and adolescence unfolds. Yet this critical time is usually neglected in the policies, programmes and budgets of countries.

A sound start embraces sound nutrition, healthcare, a hygienic home and community environment, and care, play and stimulation. Millions are still denied these rights.

9. HIV and AIDS – HIV and AIDS rivals poverty and exceeds war as a threat to the lives of millions of children in the developing world. Coordinated action must be taken to protect the rights of children infected and affected by HIV and AIDS to treatment, prevention and care.

The facts are startling:

• As of December 2005 40.3 million people living with HIV, of which 2.3 million are children.
• 4.9 million people newly infected with HIV in 2005, of which 700,000 are children under 15 years of age.
• There were 3.1 million AIDS related deaths in 2005, of which 570,000 were children under 15 years of age.
• Every 14 seconds, another parent dies of AIDS, leaving behind an orphaned child.

The epidemic is spreading through countries and across continents, threatening to undermine decades of progress in social and economic development. Unless the world takes urgent account of the specific impact of AIDS on children there will be no chance of meeting Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 6 – to halt and begin to reverse the spread of the disease by 2015. Failure to meet the goal on HIV and AIDS will adversely affect the world’s chances of progress on the other MDGs.

10. Media – Children should have access to the media, children’s voices need to be heard in the media, but children also need protection from the media’s harmful influences. Conversely, there needs to be respect for the integrity of the child in media reporting. Media portrayal of children has a profound impact on attitudes to children and childhood, which also affects the way adults behave. Even the images children themselves see influence their expectation of their roles in life.

Do Children have rights?

You bet. Children do have rights. Mere our ignorance about their rights do not abolish these rights. The Convention for the Rights of Children as adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly resolution 44/25 of 20 November 1989 entry into force 2 September 1990, in accordance with article 49 of the United Nations lays down 41 articles defining and describing Children’s rights and responsibilities of Nations and societies in Substantive Provisions (Part 1), another 4 articles for implementations and monitoring of Substantive Provisions (Part 2) and 9 articles as final clauses (Part 3). You can refer the following link for the detailed information.

Convention on the Rights of the Child

Children need protection and not lip service. You can be of help. If you care and want to take a step towards helping children world is beside you. You are not helpless. You can seek to resolve and stop violation of Children rights by bringing it into the notice of CRC. Please remember unless yours is a rogue country ( we sincerely believe there is no such) the following applies to all nations generally.

1. Compliance: States’ duties to undertake legislative and administrative reform pursuant to Art 4 of the CRC.

2. Children’s rights jurisprudence: This section will provide an overview of children’s rights jurisprudence by country and will aim to have commentary on each article of the CRC from international, regional and domestic level.

3. Avenues for redress: this section aims to provide information on options available for those whose rights have been violated. It aims to trace the steps that need to be taken to pursue a judicial or non-judicial remedy in a specific jurisdiction.

There are a number of ways that individuals, including children or adults acting on their behalf, can make use of mechanisms of the UN to challenge breaches of their rights. Complaints can be submitted to the Treaty bodies, Special Procedures and the Human Rights Council.

Mail here:

Mail: Petitions Team
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
United Nations Office at Geneva
1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Fax:+ 41 22 917 9022 (particularly for urgent matters)
E-mail:tb-petitions@ohchr.org

Please note that the Convention on the Rights of the Child is the only international human rights treaty with a mandatory reporting procedure which does not have, in addition, an existing or draft communications procedure. This is a serious matter of discrimination against children.

However you are never short of help of NGOs and CRC member organisations who are ready to help you or a child. Since we come from Malaysia and India we are mentioning contact details for these countries. If you need to know such details for your country please write to us at http://www.contactify.com/c1727)

Malaysian Association for the Protection of Children (MAPC)

c/o MPA 3rd Floor (Annex Block)
National Cancer Society Building
No. 66 Jalan Raja Muda Abdul Aziz
50300 Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia
Tel: 00 603 26942362
Fax: 00 603 26914773
Email: mapcorg@po.jaring.my

Main Contact : Shahida Musa (cyyda@pc.jaring.my)

Humana Child Aid Society – Sabah (AKA Borneo Child Aid)

P.O. Box 61850
91127 Lahad Datu
Sabah
Malaysia
Tel: +60 89886400
Fax: +60 321784113
Email: info@borneochildaid.org
Website: www.borneochildaid.org

Shelter Home For Children

PO Box 23, Jalan Sultan
46700 Petaling Jaya,
Selangor De
Malaysia
Tel: 00 603 755 0663
Fax: 00 603 756 2384
Email: shelter@po.jaring.my

Main Contact : James Nayagam

Arunodhaya – Centre for Street Children

15 Bazar Street
Royapuram
Madras 600 013
India
Tel: 00 91 44 523 2283

Working Group on the Convention on the Rights of the Child

c/o Butterflies
U-4, 1st Floor
Green Park Extension
New Delhi, 110 016
India
Tel: 00 91 11 616 39 35/619 10 63
Fax: 00 91 11 619 61 17
Email: bflies@sdalt.ernet.in

Main Contact : Roza Akylbekova (roza@bureau.kz)

Child In Need Institute (CINI)

PO Box 16742
Calcutta 700 027
India
Tel: 00 91 33467 8192/00 9133 467 1206/00 9133 467 0241
Fax: 00 91 33 245 2706
Email: cini.cal@sm1.springtrpg.ems.vsnl.net.in

Main Contact: Dr S.N Chaudhuri

Protect the children. Next time you look at your own kid’s face please remember some kids may not be so fortunate like yours.

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